Lenny's Old Old Blog: October 2003

for embarrassing posterity

Constructivism

Wednesday, October 29, 2003

I went to the Kalner thing, so far by no name besides “the Kalner thing.” He’s teaching a small group of students how to teach. More precisely, he’s leading a small group of students in learning how to teach. That and he buys food for us. This was my first meeting and the third or fourth overall. We work on a teaching method known as Constructivism, the main principles of which are

in addition to a bunch of other ideas not found in traditional schools. I won’t divulge too much to the masses, but we will eventually make and teach a bunch of five week courses. Nobody really knows whether or not this will work, but I think this is an experiment worth participating in.

Google Dictionary

Wednesday, October 29, 2003

Google can now define blog, as well as a bunch of other words with its new dictionary feature. It can also list a bunch of definitions by using a colon, as in define: blog.

Homestarween

Wednesday, October 29, 2003

Homestar Runner unveiled a slew of Halloween updates.

Stoner Rock

Sunday, October 26, 2003

Real Player artist info for Queens of the Stone Age.

Weekend or A Boring Personal Tale

Sunday, October 26, 2003

I apologize to the reader for the personal narrative, something I’m usually against putting on this site, so if you don’t know me and the other people I write about this will be completely uninteresting to you. I’ll try to avoid doing this too much.

Friday was the pep rally. I went to the pep rally two years ago when I was a naïve freshman. Last year our football team lost homecoming 49 – 0. I have no school spirit. It’s not that I dislike the school—there are plenty of great people, staff and students, an extensive library, and so on. School spirit is not about school in the least. It’s classism. And it’s mandatory.

The rally started eighth period, so the frisbee team, which (surprise, surprise) was not dancing around in front of the rest of the school, came out to play. The dean drove by to tell us that our teachers have the right to mark us absent but did not try to kick us out. Elvis, in all of his senility, tried just that. Locking himself out of the school, as he so often does, he came to yell at us for something which we were already given the right to o by a higher authority. Mark (a.k.a. John Marx) decided it would help our argument very much to moon Elvis, as well as the female security guard who came for backup by this point. Elvis said that he didn’t mind seeing Mark’s ass, but he would most certainly be in deep shit for sexually harassing the other guard.

We played some more frisbee and had a lengthy argument with Elvis about how we’re not doing anything wrong and, from his point of view, about how we kids think adults are stupid, an argument we never made about adults in general, just Elvis. To make a long story short, absolutely nothing happened to Mark and only one disc was confiscated.

Ian’s bike was stolen and then recovered by a pizzeria.

I was the target of the highest-flying mailbox. Ever.

I later walked with Justin, Brian, AJ, and Frank to Lynbrook along Sunrise Highway, which was made all the scarier by AJ’s presence.

Justin wrote another account of the day.

Yesterday I finally saw The Matrix: Reloaded with Andrew.

And finally, I woke up today to a surprise: an extra hour! Booyah!

MIT IHTFP Hack Gallery

Tuesday, October 21, 2003

I want to go to MIT.

This is so wrong

Friday, October 17, 2003

Uncle Ben and Aunt Jemima's Crazy Adventures

Mozilla Firebird

Wednesday, October 15, 2003

Mozilla Firebird is awesome. Nuff said.

Linux Demo

Monday, October 13, 2003

WorkSpot.net hosts a mostly-functional Redhat GNU/Linux demo as a Java applet. This is perfect for people like me who want to play with Linux without either

Hey Hey, My My

Saturday, October 11, 2003

My dad keeps confusing Neil Young with Neil Diamond. Today when listening to Neil Young, he says something along the lines of “this is Neil Diamond, right?” This, of course, happens every time he hears Neil Young. At first I thought that he confused them based on the name, but in actuality, it's because of their similar high-pitched voices. I didn't know Neil Diamond had a high-pitched voice, but apparently in all of his songs, you know, Keep on Rocking in the Free World, that stuff, his voice is quite high-pitched. I learned that my dad's confusion arose from his earlier confusion of the same manner.

Appealing to the Masses

Wednesday, October 08, 2003

Dan's latest adventure appeals to the greater audience, since even people not in his classes can appreciate the anti-gravity. Or can they?

Another Reason to Not Take Drugs

Wednesday, October 08, 2003

Drugs are scary. I won't discuss hard drugs—those are obviously dangerous. I won't discuss potheads that spend their lives smoking and hurting others so they can continue smoking. Perhaps worse than the first two notions are the occasional users, and watching your friends transform into chemically-dulled jesters. Granted, it can be funny to watch them crack up at what is mildly to not at all funny, but they just aren't themselves. They become eerie and shallow. They are responsible enough to not do something stupid like driving while high. So who are they hurting? In all honesty, nobody. Still, it is terrible to see the person, to hear the voice, and yet there is an alien personality.

Dan

Monday, October 06, 2003

Scott has put together some truly excellent work.

The Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything

Friday, October 03, 2003

How many live Red Hot Chili Peppers songs do I have on my computer? 42.

Birthday

Friday, October 03, 2003

That's right: everybody's favorite Marxist was born sixteen years ago today. I had a third of an Entenmann's cake with one unlit trick candle in it. We were suppoed to light it but we incurred several problems.

I still had a good time and too much cake.

In the News

Wednesday, October 01, 2003

Covers for week of October 6:

Time
Special Report: Mission Not Accomplished
NewsWeek
Losing ‘Friends’

Is this strange or is it me?

Windows

Wednesday, October 01, 2003

Ugh. I reinstalled Windows 2000 yesterday and some useful applications today. It comes with absolutely no drivers. I was on 800×600 with 16 colors. All of the video, sound, network, printer, etc. drivers had to come from third-party discs. I had installed Mandrake GNU/Linux about a month ago and mostly liked it, but Windows then became completely unusable and I don't know Linux well enough to keep a Linux-only box. Dual booting sucks. Contrary to popular belief, Linux was much easier to install than Windows, but I am returning to Windows, at least until a new computer making this current one free to be played with. I'll eventually get everything on and will be back to normal computer use.

Latest entries to this site

Older entries to this site